The two Miss Descartes had been motherless ever since they could remember, and fatherless for the past ten years. Miss Marjory had always held the reins of government, and when her elder sister had died five years ago, it seemed to make marvellously little difference to the existing order of things, save that Miss Marjory, as she was always called, complained somewhat of the loneliness of her lot. Even this trouble was soon cured, for within a year of her sister’s death, she received into her house the son and daughter of a cousin in India, and they had remained with her ever since. The young man had just taken holy orders, and had been ordained curate to Mr. Longmore, the rector, which arrangement pleased Miss Marjory very well, and delighted Ethel not a little, as it secured to her the constant companionship of her brother. In the pleasant dining-room of Minster House the three were sitting at breakfast. This room did not overlook the square, it was at the back of the house, and commanded a wide view of undulating country. The ground fell away rapidly behind the house, and after sloping lawns, broken by terrace-walks and bright flower-beds, there came an almost precipitous fall to the river-bed, and beyond the river low-lying pasture-land dotted with rustic farmsteads, and cornfields, and wooded hills beyond. Miss Marjory sat behind the urn and read her letters. Ethel and Horace sat opposite each other, and chatted of whatever was uppermost in their minds. Ethel was pretty and fair, not over-wise, easy to please and hard to put out. Horace was as much like his sister as his faultlessly clerical costume would permit. It was one of Ethel’s puzzles how her brother got in and out of his waistcoats. She meant to inquire into the matter some day, but had not yet had the courage to do so. She was not the least afraid of Horace, but she did stand in respectful and respectable awe of ‘the cloth.’ Miss Marjory’s face was by far the best worth studying of the three. It was a shrewd, clever, sharp face, not at all unkindly, yet not a face with whose owner anyone would care to trifle. Her eyes were keen and penetrating; her words came readily, and very much to the point—rather too much so, some people thought—and she had no hesitation in speaking her mind to anyone.